When conspiracies are real, what scares the conspirators?
Creative Staff:
Story: Van Jensen
Art: Pete Woods
What They Say:
For time beyond memory, the Nine Families watched from the shadows, believing themselves shepherds and manipulating whole societies as they saw fit. Nothing happened that they didn’t observe or control. Outsiders knew naught of the Families, much less threatened them. Until now.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Illuminati: a powerful world organization that controls a significant portion of countries such as the United States. Some people do believe in said organization, most just dismiss its existence. Van Jensen and Pete Woods, do take this part of American urban lore and realizes it in Cryptocracy. While there maybe some pacing issues, Cryptocracy looks to be a good series that will keep people interested.
Cryptocracy has us enter a modern day America where Grahame is going over the organization he belongs to a new person in the organization. Mars, one of the organizations that make up the nine families, makes sure to keep human progress on a leash, less it destroys itself with powers it fails to understand. While doing his duties, the family air to Mars is on his last breaths looking to transition power for the family to continue on. However, when a sudden destruction of a family occurs during a routine check up on a previous job, Grahame must now work with his colleagues to find out who or what is hunting down the families.
While the plotline will not light up many comic book’s fans innovative meters, the plotline for this issue does its job. The character set up with the world creates a very intriguing place with a blend of technology and magic. We get a sense of what and who controls these powers, more importantly, why when something goes awry it matters. Jensen takes care to make sure that we have the groundwork for future issues, fully understanding that this issue will be a setup issue.
The pacing can be at time frantic. Transitioning from panel to panel, you get a sense of wanting a fast pace action drama. Though at times, the arrangement of the panels seems not properly placed which makes the transitions a bit frantic and sometimes disorienting. This layout also hurts the flow of the story as the method of transitioning may have you read out of order sequence.
One of the bigger highlights in the first issue is the artwork. Woods has an appealing style with the characters looking animated and appealing. Coming from Deadpool work, Woods style really seems to be confident in portraying the scenes and the characters in a way that best represents them. While coloring at times could be better because of contrast, the overall artistic direction
In Summary:
Cryptocracy is off to a good start. Jensen worked in an interesting premise with a solid lead in Grahame. Woods’ artistic take with the series will keep many people coming to the series. If the pacing can adjust itself for the next volumes, we can see a strong comic series that will surely gain fans.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date:June 29th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
